


Maiden Overs: A Soap Opera

by executrix



Category: Downton Abbey, Lord Peter Wimsey (bookverse), Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries--Dorothy Sayers
Genre: AU, Crossover, Detective Story, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-07
Updated: 2011-05-07
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Downton Abbey AU in which Lord Peter Wimsey and his fiancee Barbara visit the Abbey. Pamuk may have been an unspeakable cad and rotter, but someone has to investigate his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maiden Overs: A Soap Opera

_When lovely Woman stoops to Folly  
And finds, too late, that Men betray_

PART ONE (1913)  
1.  
Matthew Crawley swung a leg over his bicycle, and settled the bicycle in the neat aperture cut in the cottage’s shrubbery precisely for its accommodation. He lifted his dispatch case from the bicycle rack. It was filled with nearly a ream of papers to review in connection with a boundary dispute involving the line between two suburban villas. As far as Matthew could determine, his client was marginally more officious and sanctimonious than his unpleasant opponent, but a feather would turn the scale. It was one of those disputes that out-Hamletted Hamlet. Not only wasn’t the battlefield large enough to bury the casualties, the tract of land at issue wouldn’t be big enough for your kiddies to give their tortoise a funeral.

Reflecting that there was something in this beck-and-call business after all, he rang the bell. When Molesley appeared, he said, “I’m devilish thirsty!” (wondering if it was Not Done to say ‘devilish’ to a servant) “Please bring me a glass of beer and some bread and cheese.” There hadn’t been time to stop in at a pub for lunch, and in any event The Three Herons didn’t have a saloon bar, and he couldn’t go into the Public in his business suit, and The Goat and Compasses pulled a perfectly vile pint…

“Beer, sir?” Molesley said, with a Spartan expression silently acknowledging the presence of the fox at his vitals. “None is kept here. I might, perhaps, send over to Abbey to the servant’s hall, but you realize, sir, they must perform a good deal of extra work because of the house party and the visit of the diplomatic gentleman…”

“Oh, very well,” Matthew said. “Order some…a barrel of bitter, no, make it best bitter,” he said recklessly. “And a couple of crates of India Pale Ale. I suppose there must be some lemonade about? My mother would make sure of that.”

“Certainly, sir. Would that be still or sparkling?”

2.  
It had been absolute Heaven, tempered only slightly by the presence of Barbara’s companion, Miss Jolley, to spend the entire rail trip from Town seated next to Barbara. The weather was cool enough, and the heating in the first-class carriage dilatory enough, that a certain amount of byplay with traveling rugs and hands clasped underneath them could be managed.

Slower and slower turned the pages of Miss Jolley’s book. Lower and lower dipped her eyelids, and then her head. It was necessary to whisper to avert her awakening, but Peter found that no hardship.

Peter found his hand deposited securely on top of the traveling rug. Barbara’s hand withdrew from his. “Honestly!” she said. “We must behave ourselves properly until we’re married.”

“Once we’re married, then behaving improperly will be de rigueur. And, y’know we needn’t wait for a masque of Nymphs and Reapers…”

Barbara furrowed her brow. Peter omitted references to Virgin Knots.

“That is, my darling, while we must wait until the sanctimonious ceremonies, once we get to Downton, I can borrow the governess cart,” Peter said, “And go over to Downton Episcopi for a special license. Then we can be married immediately.” (Unconsciously, the hand not holding Barbara’s flew to his pocket; he wondered if he would have enough cash both for the servants’ tips and a special license.)

Barbara blinked in shock. “But, Peter, that wouldn’t do at all. We can’t just wake up the curate from his afternoon nap and hale in the butcher boy and the postman for the witnesses. You haven’t even a ring.”

“There must be rings holding up the curate’s kitchen curtains…”

“That was all very well when you were five and I was three, Peter, but people like us buy their wedding rings at Asprey’s, not the ironmonger’s. And it takes ages to have wedding clothes made up. Don’t say I’m being selfish again, there are all the bridesmaids to think of.”

“It’s dashed peculiar that a girl would care more about a dozen bridesmaids than one husband,” Peter said.

“I’ve done nothing wrong!” Barbara whispered furiously. “I won’t be fobbed off with a wretched hole-and-corner affair when I deserve a proper wedding.”

The clang of Miss Jolley’s Ouida novel dropping woke her up, so the conversation had to be prorogued.

3.  
“You’ve upset Molesley again, my dear,” Mrs. Crawley said.

“It’s all to the good that you needn’t slave away all day like a navvy, Mother, but I do think it’s very hard that when an Englishman is in his castle, he can’t eat and drink what he likes. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to do anything in my own home. As long as it isn’t illegal, I suppose.”

“I hope you were brought up better than that, Matthew. As a good Christian, I would hope that you wouldn’t justify immorality on the specious grounds that it is not illegal.”

“I wouldn’t mind half so much if they were Methodys and teetotal, but I shan’t allow the Church of England to deny me a glass of beer.”

4.  
“What do they expect me to do?” Mrs. Patmore said, her brawny arms folded. “Me without any Turk food in the house.”

“You needn’t make it sound like ‘dog food’,” Carson said mildly. “I suppose if he had any special requirements, the Embassy would have said.”

“Well, don’t tell me to fossick through the library looking for messed-about foreign receipts,” Mrs. Patmore said. “If my good English potage bonne femme and poularde a la crème have been good enough for Members of the Royal Family, they’ll be good enough for him.”

Carson reminded himself to hide the cayenne pepper, in case any of the dishes on the menu called for cinnamon.

4.  
“I have consulted the Almanach de Gotha,” Mr. Pamuk said, bending over Lady Cora’s hand. “I have had the honor of the acquaintance of your sister the Condesa, but not that of the acquaintance of your sister the Duchesse.”

“Yes, we are quite the international firm,” Cora said.

5.  
“Boiled bacon and cabbage again,” Gwen said bleakly. Daisy, still impressed by the novelty of meals appearing on a regular schedule, stared at her uncomprehending, a forkful of bacon already in her mouth.

“Well, my girl, if it weren’t for pork, none of us would have a situation,” Carson said. “And the gentry wouldn’t have a roof over their heads.” He re-filled his glass, and sent Daisy for another jug of table beer and one of lemon barley water for Bates.

Thomas swallowed the last inch of beer and reached for the jug. “Remember, Thomas, you have duties this afternoon,” Carson admonished.

“One more of those and he’ll be under the doctor,” Bates said.

6.  
“It’s a splendid idea, Lady Sybil!” Matthew said. “I haven’t enough work here to keep a typewriter-girl busy full time, but it would be of great assistance to me to be able to call on one occasionally, particularly as she has her own machine so I needn’t purchase one. Can she cycle? There have been many times when I would have been grateful to have documents taken to the telegraph office, or fetched from the post office.”

“I’m sure she can,” Sybil said, not at all sure if Gwen could ride a bicycle, but certain that she’d learn to ride one on her head and backwards if it gave her a chance to gain experience of office work.

“But will she want to give up her half-day?”

“I can’t see why not,” Sybil said. “I mean, what is there to do in a dead-and-alive hole like Downton anyway?”

“Sit with her feet in a tub of Epsom salts reading the Girl’s Own Paper, I should think.”

7.  
Peter was not particularly fond of field sports, ceding them to Gerald as an area where there was no competition. Gerald, in turn, made the Br’er Rabbit-like sacrifice of permitting Peter to sustain the family’s honor in the lists of scholarship. Having come to Downton on the train, Peter had not, of course, brought a hunter along. Nor had Barbara, although she brought her riding kit, trusting that someone would be sure to mount her.

Out of respect for the Abbey’s geyser, Peter decided to bathe before the hunt returned.

At first he wondered why the footman hung about, offering soap that Peter could quite well have fetched all the way from the soap dish. Thomas reminded himself that this one was just a Duke’s son, not a Duke himself or ever likely to be, so he wouldn’t cut up as rich. But this time Thomas wouldn’t be so soft about the letters, he’d keep them at the Left Letters at the pub.

When Thomas stationed himself at the rim of the bathtub, in a brazen display made all the more brazen by his slow deployment of the bath brush in an upward direction, Peter spluttered and, saying that dash it all he wasn’t in the Fifth Form any more, and he wanted to be left in peace.

8.  
“Ah, Lady Cora!” Pamuk said, looking up from the crisp, still-warm copy of The Times. He put down the newspaper and his Havana cigar and rose to greet her. He was mildly surprised to see her in the smoking room, but it was her house, she could go wherever she liked.

“Please, call me Cora,” she said huskily. “I believe you hunted yesterday? Did you find?”

“It was a splendid day’s sport!” he said. He abruptly terminated the planned panegyric to Lady Mary’s Amazonian equitation skills, realizing that it might impair his chances with this most unexpected of quarries. “But, you did not go out.”

“It is a sport for young people,” Cora said. “My days in the field have passed, now that I am a stout matron.”

“Never!” Pamuk said, drawing closer to her. “Time has stood still with you, for I cannot believe that there was ever a time when you were lovelier than this. You have the impetuous heart of a girl, and all the warmth and charm of the fullness of womanhood.” He looked at her. She did not seem to be running for the door or offering resistance of a greater or lesser degree of violence. “And, dare I say it, a woman of the world?”

“The English can be awfully narrow-minded, I find. They are not modern.” Cora extended her bent arm for Pamuk to link. “Shall we walk? There are some splendid features of the grounds that, perhaps, you have not yet seen.”

“Discovery is my passion,” he said.

9.  
Lady Cora sat bolt-upright in the pew, although it was closed off so no one would have been able to see her slump except her daughters, most of whom would have sympathized. A twinge of pain shot through her back. Dr. Clarkson said that scientists called it “mittelschmerz,” and signaled the release of an egg that would later result in her Monthly Visitor.

{{Give me children or I die}} she thought, unobtrusively rummaging through her reticule, resting her pocket diary on the open pages of her prayer book. Two months since the last Visit. Whether he meant it as encouragement or a dire warning, Dr. Clarkson said that for some women, there was a last burst of fertility before the Great Climacteric.

Well, at least it was Sunday, she didn’t have to wait very long to ask for pardon. Cora praised herself for having enough gumption to go from Cincinnati girl to Countess of Grantham. It was the American way to hope that one’s children would build success on success, so at the very least, Downton should be Mary’s. It had seemed that that was all arranged, but the arrangement fell through, and it was all to do over again.

Matthew was a nice enough fellow, and over time the ivy of Downton’s walls would bind him into a perfectly acceptable Earl. But that would be all right for Downton, but what about Mary? Before that…awful event…Cora had greatly enjoyed several trips each year on ocean liners. The charming—and rather fast—company! The delicious meals! The impeccably chic women, many of them clad in models that would not be suitable for Downton for two more years—or for Boston for five! But now, even the thought of setting foot on a ship doused her in horror.

Casting her gaze from stained-glass window to window, Cora rather thought that God would understand her concerns. At the very least, Mary would look after her namesake.

10.  
Peter discoursed, at some length, about incunabula, a subject of paralyzing tedium to everyone present other than the Earl, who, however, had a fairly good idea of what he owned.

One of his ears began to burn. He wondered if someone was talking about him, but wouldn’t that be both ears? Then he looked around, where Thomas was holding a silver dish of green peas, cooling as Peter ignored it.

When serving at table, Downton’s footmen were never permitted to speak to guests.

The Dowager Countess smiled. Thomas smiled back at her.

11.  
Peter loped over the lawn, idly looking for the folly that, according to his guidebook, had recently been reconstructed in the height of eighteenth-century taste. He spotted something that must have been it, looked down just in time to avoid falling into the ha-ha, and wondered if he heard voices. He thought that he smelled Guerlain’s “Quelques Fleurs,” the perfume that Barbara daringly wore in lieu of violet water or eau-de-Cologne.

“You are far too young to marry,” Pamuk said, although he greatly admired the freedom that married ladies enjoyed in England. “To marry, is to…be locked up in the glass case! To be trapped, like a fly in amber! For a lovely girl like you, these splendid years of blossoming should be years of discovery, of exploration! Not to give yourself to that parrot-faced fool.”

Although Peter knew that eavesdroppers seldom hear any good of themselves, he thought this was a bit rich.

“Oh, of course I must marry Peter,” Barbara said. “He’ll make an awfully good husband, he’s mad about me. It’s what our people have expected, ever since we were tiny. He used to come to cambric tea-parties, with my teddy bears, in a tiny playhouse that looked just like this.”

“Ah, English women!” Pamuk apostrophized, turning slightly away from the direction from which Peter, fuming, approached. “With their teddy bears! And their water colours! And their flowers!” He seized Barbara’s hands. “Do you not wish to be a woman, ripe and splendid as a pomegranate?” He moved closer to her on the wrought-iron bench. “A true woman? There are so few real women in England.” He gripped one of her hands tighter, releasing the other so he could put his arm around her shoulder. An arm around her waist would have been more intimate but, in a seated posture, the arm around the shoulder was the thing so the girl could be magnetized inexorably into an embrace. “But how can there be women in this infernal cold land of England, where there are no men…only boys?”

Peter supposed that, in the modern world, girls did not swoon when improper familiarities occurred, and “Unhand me, you swine!” wouldn’t sound at all Advanced. But he had expected a somewhat more vigorous protestation of loyalty on the part of his fiancée.

He pushed the door open (pushing it twice, as it stuck the first time) and was about to open his mouth in remonstrance.

“I say, is that the dressing gong?” Pamuk said, strolling toward the house before Peter could say “Of course it isn’t, you polecat.”

His rival removed, Peter turned to Barbara, who said, “Well, it’s not my fault! Don’t blame me! You heard for yourself how flattering he was!”

“’The woman tempted me, and I did eat’? I say, Barbara, no man ever admires Adam for that statement. It’s a mean sneak’s trick to go and blame someone else. Even if he really did it after all.”

“Calling someone a mean sneak is a man’s trick, Peter. Women know that—if you’re pushed into a corner, you must get out of it as you can. There’s no point in telling a girl to be good sport when she hasn’t got a chance.”

12.  
The Earl moved his hand toward the board, moved it back, and moved the bishop instead. “And you and Barbara are engaged? She’s a lovely girl.”

“It hasn’t been in the Times,” Peter said cautiously.

Grantham sighed. “I hate to say it, but I’m glad of that.”

Peter began to bristle.

“Not because you wouldn’t be happy together, mind. Between your honeymoon and the date you lead your men into battle. But what if you don’t come back? What if, like poor Bates or worse, you are injured and can’t resume your place in society—and as a husband? War is the very worst sort of husbandry, you know. Rather than culling out the weakest from the herd, it slaughters the strongest and the bravest, those with the deepest love of our country.”

13.  
The Homeric confrontation never occurred, because, even if Peter had insisted on pistols at dawn (and even if Pamuk had shown up for the duel), Pamuk managed to miss the dawn entirely.

Miss Jolley telegraphed Barbara’s parents with the news. They immediately wired back that Barbara must leave immediately. A house that had been the scene of a scandalous mysterious death was no place for a young girl whose spotless reputation needed to be protected.

But, in any case, with or without a death to cast a pall over the proceedings, most of the guests would have needed to get back to Town.

PART TWO (1914)  
1.  
 _My Dear Flim:  
Weren’t you at Downton Abbey when that Turkish fellow, Pamuk, went off to his heavenly reward? On top of everything else, he was by way of being a diplomat, so the FO wants someone who doesn’t wear hobnailed boots to go and find out what happened.  
As you can see by the jolly headed paper (is it not impressive? Do you not bow down before my magnificence? Can I not compel your obeisance as once I compelled you to make my toast?) I am polishing up the handle on the big front door.  
The Hon. Geoffrey Telford-Mayne_

 _Dear Bongo-Bongo:  
One hates to think of one’sself as the Stout Red-Faced Party, if only for the inevitability of defeat, but…I could not be more indifferent to the fate of Pamuk. I wish I had punched his head when I had the chance. Was he even really from Turkey? My guess would be a gigolo from the fetid depths of Bournemouth.  
PDBW_

 _Flim:  
Oh, he was the goods, all right. Related to everyone in Turkey who might make a difference to us when the war comes.  
G._

 _Geoffrey:  
Fate meant he was not an English Gentleman, but, damn it, he was no sort of Gentleman at all. Though that in itself mayn’t be a capital offense, even if he had a taking-off (if that is what you, or rather the FO, imply) I can’t see there was any deep damnation in it. The question is not who wanted to kill him, but who didn’t.  
PDBW_

 _Dear Flim:  
You shock me. Next thing, you’ll be emulating St. Sherlock and watching someone bump off a blackmailer.  
To be serious for a moment, if you ever are, that is, I reiterate that as everyone knows, there will be war. If the demise of the Lustful Turk creates a Diplomatic Incident, it will be sooner rather than later. We all must do what we can to opt for later.  
Bongo_

 _Dear Geoffrey:  
Oh, very well. But I’ll have to be careful. Lady Cora’s never thought much of me because I’m a younger son. But now Mary’s got to sell where she can, she is not for all markets._

 _Peter:  
There was a Duke in play last year—Crowborough, a minor Duke if there can be such a thing--but somehow (right around the time of l’Affaire Pamuk) he sheered off. And just when she had almost reached the eighth squared and Queened. Or would that be the seventh square and Duchessed?  
G._

 _Geoffrey:  
Sounds like the opposite of what old Shylock said. You have among you many a purchased Duke, and you feed him up and marry him to your daughters. I do think it’s hard that a chap can’t pick his own girl and has to take one of the ones they chuck at him. At least (for his sins!) my brother seems to like Helen well enough.  
Yours in Sher-locks, Shy-locks and coco-nut shys,  
Peter_

2.  
“Servants’ day out, of course,” Isobel said. “So Mrs. Bird has left our luncheon for us.” She lifted the Britannia metal cover of the chafing dish, permitting the enticing perfume of bratwurst to waft.

When she first learned of her son’s elevation in the world, Isobel Crawley consulted Debrett’s, of course, supplementing that information with research at the estimable Mancunian public library. The Pforzheimer family had found it expedient to leave Prussia in the 1840s, found it expedient to shorten the family name, to one that looked well on a handbill, newspaper advertisement, or in the drop curtain in a vaudeville house, e.g., “Forth is First!” and “Sally Forth!”

“Matthew brought back these tankards from Munich; he studied there for a year, you know.” (“And speaking German will be so useful if he goes into the War Office” remained unsaid). She flipped open the lid of her gleaming white porcelain tankard and took a deep draught of beer.

Cora’s eyes gleamed.

“And Apfelstrudel. Mit Schlag!” said the cunning Eminence Grise. She thought that Matthew could do better for himself, but he mooned dreadfully over Lady Mary, and it would be so convenient for everyone if he could get his way.

3.  
Not only did Peter think that his encounter with the Dowager Countess was as good as a play, he suspected that the play was “The Importance of Being Earnest.” He could feel the grime of a major railway terminus settle over him.

“Dashed rum go, wasn’t it, that Turkish fellow dying last year?” Peter said delicately.

“One is obliged, out of Christian charity, to offer hospitality,” the Dowager said.

Peter blinked.

“Apart from that obligation, Monsieur Pamplemousse was not within…one’s sphere.”

“Had you any reason to believe, Lady Violet, that anyone present would have wished to harm Mr. Pamuk?”

“What, in our house?”

Evidently, then, the programme had switched to the Scottish play. “Of course,” Lady Violet said, “Persons of that sort are known to travel with an…escort…of Thugees and Dacoits.”

“Then you believe that his death was not natural?”

“I believe, in foreign parts that have not benefited by our civilizing efforts, and consequently remain in a brutish state of Nature, unnatural death is common.”

“He died in England, though. Might be jolly to have a bit of a mystery in the family, what? Nothing like that ever happened to us.”

“You are a very inquisitive boy, Peter,” Lady Violet said, terminating the interview.

Wondering if perhaps he himself had bumped off Pamuk in a state of somnambulism, Peter reminded himself to check his dressing-gown pocket for random diamonds.

4.  
Peter quickly raised his hand to signal “When!”; he didn’t know how often Dr. Clarkson could afford to replenish his supply of what proved to be a grocerly blend of spirits. “You felt comfortable giving a certificate?” he asked.

“I should have preferred a necropsy to be performed, of course, but his people were very quick to remove the body. I don’t know, it may be a custom of theirs, like the Jews. But I daresay there wasn’t much of a medical mystery about his death. I don’t suppose you noticed the late Mr. Pamuk’s earlobes?” Dr. Clarkson said.

“He wore his hair long, like an artist in a comic paper,” Peter said. “I couldn’t have seen the blighter’s earlobes if I’d made a point of it.”

“The significance may not be the same among the Levantines as among us, but a particular malformation—a diagonal crease in the earlobe—is sometimes predictive of coronary artery disease.”

“Young chap like that, though? I thought that heart disease was an old man’s game.”

“Exertion…he was in the hunting field the day before.”

“Wasn’t he just!”

There was a horrible shriek from region of Dr. Clarkson’s back door. “I say, have you had a telephone fitted? Jolly useful thing for a doctor.”

“Yes,” Clarkson said, his face grim. “I’m sorry, Lord Peter, but I’ve been called to the Abbey. It’s an emergency. You can let yourself out, of course.”

5.  
As Peter headed toward his room, he saw the tweenie assaulting the hall carpet with a peculiar device that looked like a spiked harrow.

“Sorry, sir!” she said, rushing away. “I know I ain’t supposed to be where no one can see me…”

“That’s all right,” Peter said. “I never really thought that Father Christmas came to dust the drawing room, you know.”

“Oh, I’m not allowed in the drawing room!” the girl said, halted in her flight. Peter thought that that might be for the best: if she couldn’t be trusted with a housemaid’s uniform, he wouldn’t want her let loose on a Ming vase. “Only, you see, sir, I didn’t think you’d be here, and as you’re the only guest, I thought I’d try to fix the carpet. It’s never been the same, sir, not since that other time when you were here.”

“No,” Peter said, pursing his lips as he looked at the railway tracks etched into the carpet. “I don’t suppose it has.”

6.  
Father O’Shea looked out over his domain, where one parishioner—a woman in decent black—knelt in the very farthest pew in the rear, weeping like Mary Magdalene and rattling through the rosary as if she operated a Marconi telegraph.

“May I help you, my daughter?” he asked, although wasn’t she old enough to be his mother and all. She shrieked at his gentle touch and fled back to the house.

Father O’Shea shook his head. What were people to think of the Holy Church if Catholics were to go around playing the fool like a cartful of zanies?

Sarah fled back to the house. Back, where Lady Cora had slipped on the cake of soap that Sarah had pushed into her path. Back to the house, where Lady Cora had shrieked with the pain of the fall, and then all the blood drained out of her face as she pressed her hand to her mouth in terror. Back to the house where, presumably, Dr. Clarkson had already arrived, and perhaps the police as well. Sarah wondered what would they do—transport her? Hang her?

7.  
Robert stood at the window, staring unseeing out at the lawn.

He turned, steeling himself for what he would see on Dr. Clarkson’s face, but the doctor looked relieved, and a smile fought with his professional demeanour.

“They are quite safe, Lord Grantham,” the doctor said, lightly touching Robert’s shoulder. “Unfortunately, Lady Cora has sprained her wrist rather painfully. I’ve bandaged it and given her a sling. It may interfere with the lines of her tea gown, but that can’t be helped.”

“Thank you,” Robert said quietly.

“Oh, don’t thank me!” Dr. Clarkson said. “Nature is very strong.” If it were that easy to get rid of a baby, he thought, those poor girls wouldn’t go about boiling themselves in hot baths and chucking themselves down stairs and poisoning themselves with gin, and all for nothing.

8.  
“Oh, there you are, Sarah!” Cora said. She couldn’t fathom why O’Brien’s eyes were reddened and her step uncertain. “It’s bally difficult to take out all these darned hairpins with only one arm!”

O’Brien looked her up and down, from the messy haystack of her hairdo, to her slippered feet, with the gentle swell of her belly and sling on her arm in the middle. O’Brien gave a shriek and rushed out again, heading back to the church.

Cora sighed. It was awful to dismiss a servant without a character but really, she couldn’t have a dipsomaniac in the house, not with the girls around and with a baby soon to come.

9.  
“Here,” Mary said. “At least we can have a bit of privacy to speak about…important things.”

Matthew wondered distractedly if, once…or if...Downton became his, he would have this silly, ugly little building torn down. “Yes, Mary, what is it? I am rather busy you know, with estate matters as well as earning my own livelihood, in case the Countess has a son.”

“Well, if she does, he won’t grow up for ages,” Mary said. “And I don’t suppose he would be horrid enough to make you leave this great barn.” Although, she mused, if she had a little brother he might grow up to be like his Aunt Edith. Or his grandmother.

“I won’t be trifled with, you know,” Matthew said.

“Oh, Matthew, dear,” (Matthew flinched) “Of course you know that when I first met you, I…I couldn’t see you properly, and I was horrid to you. I can see you now, you know.”

“Do you mean that you love me?”

Mary, her eyes brimming, could only nod.

“What good is that to me? You daren’t roll the dice,” Matthew said. “Oh, you love me quite enough if that will make you a Countess someday, but not enough to pare cheese and mend your stockings as a Manchester solicitor’s wife.”

“Is that what you think?” Mary said, rounding on him. “Oh, God, if only it was! I wish it was! You think that I look down on you, that I think you’re not good enough to be my husband? I’ve done things, Matthew, terrible things, that make me wonder if I’m fit to be your wife. To be any honest, good man’s wife.”

“Well, I haven’t been a saint myself,” Matthew said. “Just don’t write me a letter!”

Mary stared at him. The Crawleys were not a literary family.

Mary wasn’t sure what girls meant when they went on and on about being in love. But when she found herself in the ardent arms of a kind, intelligent, handsome man who was willing to solve all her problems even after being told the truth (or, at any rate, the truth strongly hinted at), Mary ecstatically yielded to one thing leading to another.

“Well, we’ll have to get married now,” Matthew said, with satisfaction. “And as soon as possible. Special license, perhaps.”

“I think that’s a perfectly splendid idea,” Mary said.

10.  
 _Bongo, My Old Son:  
You may relieve everyone’s feelings by asserting firmly that there is no Case to Answer. No evidence of foul play. The medico has a perfectly logical explanation for how the blighter could be rampaging about one day and dead the next. And he also had a bright thought, that any remaining mystification can be blamed on the Embassy whisking away the remains. _

_Also, Ladies’ Names Are Not Mentioned in the Mess, and there could be the devil of one if there were an excessively vigilant enquiry. There’s no one to hang (…even if it’s far better hang wrong f’ler than no f’ler) and nothing to be gained by stirring up a fuss.  
PDBW _

11.  
 _Dear Sir Anthony:  
I hope you will do us the favor of dining with us next Thursday. You have reason to feel that the Crawley family has not treated you fairly. Nevertheless, my son, as a member of that family and perhaps its future head, has something to say in your interest that may, perhaps, make amends.  
I am sure you will grant me this favour, I know you could never be cruel to a lady.  
Mrs. Crawley (Isobel)._

After the chicken casserole and trifle had been dispatched, Isobel Crawley (in a gown that Manchester had often seen, but Downton seldom) rose, smiled warmly at Sir Anthony Strallan, and said, “I shall leave you gentlemen to your port.”

Sir Anthony refused a cigar. Matthew prolonged the business of lighting his pipe as long as he could, then took a thoughtful puff and said, “I ask you the favor of hearing me out before you say anything.”

There wasn’t much Sir Anthony could do other than nod, so he nodded.

“No doubt Lady Sybil would disagree vehemently, but the fact is, Sir Anthony, a lady is not a gentleman. And just as doubtless, Sybil would say that they haven’t our education, or our duties, or our privileges. Well, Lady Mary and I have reached an understanding.”

A variety of expressions played over Sir Anthony’s face.

“Oh, I know, she can be a tartar. And when we—and when we reached that understanding, Mary told me that she made a certain statement to you at the garden party. And that statement was a pure fabrication, a falsehood uttered maliciously. Indeed, I believe it was actionable—although I hope you will not take it as such. Certainly, it is shocking that an English lady would lie, and equally shocking that one sister should strive to destroy another sister’s happiness. And in all justice, Mary should be the one making the apologies, but as gentlemen, we owe the ladies our protection.”

Sir Anthony nodded once again, although, if he were upon the African veldt and a rhinoceros charged at the Dowager Countess, his heart would have bled for the charging rhino.

“So, if you believe that your own happiness would be advanced with Lady Edith at your side, presiding over your dinner table, as your hostess, and if you were to have a family…”

“I didn’t take to you at first, Crawley,” Strallan said. “But you’ve earned your place here.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, sir.”

“You’ve done fine work as a magistrate. So perhaps…having a brother in law would not be the hardest fate that could befall a man.”

EPILOGUE  
Lady Strallan acted as Matron of Honor at Lady Mary’s wedding. Sybil, on leave from VAD training, was her bridesmaid. The mood of austerity dictated a small country wedding: so many of the family and guests were already in uniform. Captain Wimsey attended the wedding, but he was not a close enough friend of Lieutenant Crawley’s to be asked to stand up for him.

Society would not have been surprised if Lady Mary had been discreetly enceinte, as so often occurred at the weddings featured in the rotogravure. No one could recollect any weddings in the best families, however, where the Matron of Honor was detectably, and the mother of the bride blatantly, so.

**Author's Note:**

> In cricket, a "maiden over" is the equivalent of a "scoreless inning."


End file.
